Another overwhelming day at Gen Con. So much so that we were so drained, we didn’t go back for Day 4 on Sunday. *sigh*

But we were very excited to watch the Costume Contest! We were able to get pretty good seats in the fourth row with our press credentials and once again watched the Different Drummer Belly Dancers perform the pre-show. Two of the ladies are regulars from previous years and two were new at Gen Con.

My camera had issues focusing last year when I took pictures at the contest. Everyone kept moving so many were blurry. This year I decided to try taking video clips of each person and taking still snapshots out of the clips later. Still not very sharp pictures, but they were the best I could do with my 12 megapixel digital camera. Here’s a link to the full album. And here are a few favorites:

The BEST IN SHOW winner was this dude:

As in 15 previous years, Luke Ski performed the show to entertain the audience while the judges’ votes were tallied. He performs nerdy parody songs, much like Weird Al. This year, he opened with a Dark Crystal number, transitioning into the Marvel characters being owned by Disney song, then a really sweet romantic song comparing his love for a special lady to many of his favorite movie/tv characters/situations. Then he brought it back to straight comedy with a song about classic Monty Python sketches like the Ministry of Silly Walks and took Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” and sang it about all the Jewish characters in the Star Wars movies. He had a follow up concert scheduled for 9pm, incidentally the same time as the Masquerade Ball at Union Station.

After sitting at the show for three hours, we were STARVED. We met up with a couple of friends, walked all over downtown Indianapolis trying to find where they parked their car to feed the meter, then tried to find a place to eat. On the way, we detoured through Monument Circle and found the epic gathering of all motorcycles EVER. Or it felt like that. It was loud, VERY loud.

After finding a bunch of restaurants having a super long wait (on a Saturday night? No kidding.), we ended up back at the mall food court. Again. If you are keeping track, that’s the third day in a row. After having chicken tenders and waffle fries two days in a row, I switched to a Cajun place and got a veggie side and two meats. My stomach didn’t agree with it later.

Our plan was to next go to the AMV contest in the Anime section at the Westin. AMVs are Anime Music Videos. They are created by fans and are really cool to check out and often the audience gets to vote on the winners in a contest. We showed up at 8pm to the room it was stated to be at in the program and…found a bunch of people waiting to go to a “Writing for Television” seminar. That was written on the schedule for two different rooms so they switched to the other room and we waited in our room for 15 minutes without anyone showing up. The schedule outside the door said it was switched to 9pm so we walked around to find something else to do and found……the LIVE ACTION Sailor Moon series!

I could have watched this all night, it was so much fun. It is hilarious and still heart-warming. I particularly loved how they just made the plush cat figure of Luna nod her head up and down to talk and pretended her paws were typing on the computer’s keyboard. It was a point in the series before Sailor V joined the squad and Serena still doesn’t know Tuxedo Mask’s true identity even though he probably knows her’s. At 9, we thought about going back over the the AMV contest or to the Masquerade Ball but didn’t feel like going anywhere. After we had watched enough, we went home for the night.

I asked a friend how her experience was at the Ball and she said the DJs played a lot of slow songs by request and less dance music than previous years. Said friend was dressed as a Tardis so she knows what she is talking about.

Thanks for following me along on these adventures and putting up with my not quite so perfect pictures of the costume contest. It’s been fun, but it’s also exhausting. I’m whipped here sitting on the couch Sunday night trying to sum it all up. If you were there, I hope you had fun too.